1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal apparatus such as a smartphone or tablet computer terminal; a method of displaying job execution settings screens, being implemented by the portable terminal apparatus; and a recording medium having a program of displaying job execution settings screens, being stored thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
In recent years, portable terminal apparatuses with various operating systems (OSs) such as Android OS and iOS, e.g., smartphones and tablet computer terminals, have been broadly used.
Such portable terminal apparatuses are capable of having various applications installed; and techniques called “intent” and “URL scheme” are employed on such portable terminal apparatuses with Android OS and iOS, respectively, as a feature to build a link between functions from different applications. When a user performs settings on an application-based screen, these inter-application cooperation techniques suggest one or more applications for configuring the item on the screen so that he/she can select a desirable one, for example a print application, from the suggestions, then call the user selected application to activate.
More specifically, by supporting “intent” cooperation between a cloud storage service application and a print application for example, these inter-application cooperation techniques allow users to make a specified printer print a document file stored on a cloud storage service without giving additional instructions on any application.
Meanwhile, some printers such as multi-function peripherals (MFPs) that are multifunctional digital image forming apparatuses are configured to restrict users to use functions of the MFPs themselves and display different screens on their operation panels depending on the user.
However, portable terminal apparatuses which processes data may have applications produced by third-party vendors, not printer makers. In such a case, when a user operates a MFP from such a portable terminal apparatus, the above-mentioned inter-application cooperation techniques, i.e., “intent” and “URL scheme” calls a job execution application such as a print application but may not display job execution settings screens that reflect the user's restricted functions on the MFP, in accordance with the job execution application. This caused confusion among users.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2010-283472 discloses a technique that allows an image forming apparatus to manage licenses for each application and perfectly implement restriction of functions.
Specifically, an application manager detects restricted functions of users from those of an application. A service server stores the restricted functions detected by the application manager, being registered thereon. When a user gives instructions to execute a function by operating an application, the service server judges whether or not it is registered as one of the restricted functions. If it is not registered as one of the restricted functions, execution of the requested function is permitted; if it is registered as one of the restricted functions, execution of the requested function is prohibited.
Actually, the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2010-283472 is not based on the idea of using any inter-application cooperation technique such as “intent” or “URL scheme”, thus it could not provide any perfect solution to the problem of causing confusion among users because an inter-application cooperation technique does not display job execution settings screens that reflect the user's restricted functions on the MFP.
The portable terminal apparatus may be configured to obtain user information objects indicating users registered on the MFP and settings information objects indicating settings for the respective users via an application produced by third-party vendors, then generate and display job execution settings screens that reflect restricted functions of the respective users on the basis of the obtained information objects.
In such a case, highly-complicated applications need to be developed and users are not allowed to make an MFP execute a job from an application easily by using an inter-application cooperation technique such as “intent” or “URL scheme”, which is a problem because it opposes the recent technical trend.
The description herein of advantages and disadvantages of various features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed in other publications is in no way intended to limit the present invention. Indeed, certain features of the invention may be capable of overcoming certain disadvantages, while still retaining some or all of the features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed therein.